Systems programming. OS work at Google/Microsoft/Apple, drivers at NVIDIA/AMD/Intel, etc. Pays well, hours aren’t too bad, and most importantly no babysitting. No being on call 24/7. My manager knows my cell number, but I don’t get a call more than once a year. Brush up on your C++.
:eek:
runs away screaming
Regards,
Shodan
Although, in the spirit of “poking the rattlesnake to see if it bites”, I am guessing
Salary commensurate with experience.
Regards,
Shodan
Your biggest problem seems to be a bad attitude. :rolleyes:
The problem is almost certainly you.
I have been in IT for thirty years. I’m an applications developer, that’s considered IT, right? I have worked 60 hours in a week a handful of times in all those years. I have worked at small companies (<100 employees) up to Fortune 500. The only people I have seen working like you describe have brought this on themselves in one way or another. Your situation is abnormal.
Switch to helpdesk work.
I have compassion for Rabbit. I’ve managed to transition slowly out of IT. My worst job in terms of on-call hours was working for a 911 dispatch center. Public safety can’t afford shit, so all the equipment was at least 15 years old. In addition to system administration, programming and user support, I was responsible for replacing the shitty old terminals and printers at all the police and fire stations around the county. There were weekends when I’d get paged out to “fix” a terminal, get home and get paged out again for the same stupid terminal an hour later. They couldn’t afford new equipment and the ones we had were no longer manufactured, so they were “repaired” by cannibalizing other ones. It was very frequent that I was replacing broken terminals with other broken terminals. (Despite that, working in 911 was pretty awesome and I missed it after I left.)
In another job that was more of a consultant level, I was required to do system upgrades and installs at client sites two or three times a year. So that wasn’t too bad. But I knew it was time to leave when I joked to myself one night doing an install at 3am that I could do this job in my sleep. And then realized that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. I was stagnating.
Another thing I experienced was that every company hired me for what my freshest skill was. And once hired, they wouldn’t let me work on anything new. I clearly remember learning Cobol in college (among other, better languages, like C) and thinking I didn’t want to base a career on Cobol programming. Every time I changed jobs, I swore to everyone that I was NOT a Cobol programmer. And yet, that’s primarily what I did in every job and I retired from being a fucking Cobol programmer 20 years later. It’s not that I couldn’t do anything else. It’s that nobody would pay me for anything else. I did teach myself other things like web programming, but couldn’t get any actual projects doing that stuff, and potential employers feel that if you weren’t paid to do it then you don’t know your stuff. This is why suggestions to newbies like doing volunteer programming or working for free on OpenSource don’t always pan out into paid jobs. Employers only count it as experience if you were paid for it. Completely ridiculous.
So anyway, yeah. I salvaged some of my long experience by becoming a business analyst. Now I have different frustrations (a company that has no clue what project management is), but overal life is much saner.
I gradually transitioned the situation in which I work as an IT-type employee. I work 35 hours per week, with one day of that being flex-time (I’m at my desk today but typicallly on a Monday I am not); I’m a contractor and can do work for other clients as I see fit; I use my own computer, not one issued to me*; I work from home and don’t have to commute or deal with dress codes or the other vagaries of workplace interactions.
I used to need on occasion to go into the office at 2 AM and deal with a database-server meltdown or lockup situation, or to stay late or come in early to do structural surgery on the database that required it to be offline; but that’s no longer part of my responsibilities.
Never been on 24x7 call for anything except 5-alarm emergencies, and even that was limited to email. Refuse to be on a cellphone tether to anyone. I get to have a life of my own.
- actually, through a combo of sheer good fortune and sheer cussedness on my own part, I have never had to use an employer-issued computer as my primary computer for any job at which I’ve been employed since 1992, when I had to work from an MS-DOS departmental computer as a work-study student in college. Byproduct of the era in which I worked, in part, and in part from working mostly for small companies. Brought my own Mac with me, set up my own way, and never had interference for what I had on it or how I used it, including personal use during business hours.
Behind this job description will be a CEO or other King-Of-The-Company who keeps saying “I don’t understand why our IT is such a mess! We used to do this all with one person”
(In reality, that person left, was fired or died when the pressure got too much)
It’s common motivational talk to say we used to do this with just one person. It may be true because ‘this’ was something much simpler once upon a time. Back in the days of the horse drawn computer systems took in some data on punched cards, added it all up and spit out some more cards or a bunch of fan-fold paper. One person could perform all the coding, which may have rarely changed, one person could operate the computer which was only executing one process at a time. The OS would have been minimal, there were no UI layers, there was minimal memory and storage to be concerned about. So sure, it could be true, but it’s like comparing a single horse drawn wagon to the FedEx delivery system.
Have you tried getting some VC funding to form your own app startup for a couple years and then exiting in a seven or eight figure acquisition deal?
With respect, applications development can’t be done without a planned, measured approach.
With IT support/infrastructure management, it’s possible to build up a really serious technical debt that keeps piling up and doesn’t cause immediate failure, but eventually becomes a hole too big to climb out of. Pity the poor idiot in command when that day dawns.
In the sense that we brought this on ourselves by being dumb enough to take the job, yeah.
That takes too long. How about if you get started coding, and we will get you the specs as soon as they are available?
I wish I had comforting words for the OP. I have been in jobs where 40 hours got you considered a slacker, and the only resolution was to leave or get RIF’fed. Been there, done that - three months after I started my current position, the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan said “You sure are a lot easier to live with after you left your last position.”
A bit less money - a whole lot less stress.
Regards,
Shodan
I got out of IT in 2001 after suffering a stress-related back injury.
I spent 2004-2012 trying to do other things and couldn’t make anywhere near the same money. Went through bankruptcy during that period.
Got back into the business, but from a help desk perspective/support perspective. I work a fixed 40 hour week, I don’t do programming anymore, I don’t do “OMG WORK 1200 HOURS PER DAY UNTIL WE GET THIS FIXED!” anymore either. Sure, I don’t make the money I would have been making now if I’d kept doing programming for another 15 years, but since I would have died by the end of 2002 due to the physical stress, I’ll take the trade-off.
I had some cast iron drain pipe rust through in my basement. In talking with the plumber (probably in his 40’s) he told me he was a former IT support guy for a large company, but was experiencing the same thing as the OP - plus there is the constant change and the possibility of being outsourced. He studied plumbing and HVAC at night, got his certification, got hired immediately by a large plumbing company, then quit his IT job.
Now, he said, he gets paid well and can still work insane hours - but now only if he wants to and he gets paid OT for it. His stress level went down and quality of life went up. He likes the benefits and stability of working for a large company, but isn’t beholden to them either. A good plumber/HVAC guy is always in demand, or he can strike out on his own at any time. He was well pleased with the change. He traded one set of pipes and throughput issues for another that he likes better.
And often that technical debt can be laid at the doors of the applications teams. Who don’t have to support it and who haven’t budgeted for the hardware in their project - so end up slicing an existing server farm beyond capacity, then it becomes the ops teams problem to keep it running.
I agree with your premise but not your example. I think it’s more about the size of the business and how it scales. For example, this year I launched an online retail shop. Thanks to things like Quickbooks and pre-built online sales platforms I’ve been running single-handedly and in my spare time outside of a full time job, what used to take a team of people do to. Before the internet, to start a small company you’d need an accountant or two, a marketer, an IT guy, a salesman or three, etc. But my sales volume is really, super low. As I grow the business I expect I’ll have to hire someone for marketing, a few people to pack and ship orders, etc. I can do it all by myself now, but you’re right, it would be stupid and inconsiderate if in ten years I expected any one of my workers to run the entire business because I was able to do it today.
It’s coincidental, but this was a key data point in a recent Hotel Impossible episode. The host discovered that the front desk clerk of the hotel was working as reception and general manager and housekeeping manager, working long hours and 24x7x365 on call as well. Then when he found the maintenance man, who had only been working there for a few months, he learned that the GM used to also be responsible for all the maintenance on the property. Not just supervising it, doing it. When he finally nailed down the owner about exploiting her people, her defense was “I ran this place all by myself when I bought it, so I know it can be done.”
Yeah, but I got bored of the beer carts, libertarianism, and hoodies, so I quit for the thrill-a-minute roller coaster ride that is Enterprise IT.
I’ve been there, and was ready to go back to it after a round-the-world shift, because that is what I thought I would have to do to get re-established.
But I found the right job (network support and security), and I am now really happy. I work 8:30 to 17:30, and have just the occasional late departure as I hand a customer over to the next support center. I also do slightly more than my share of Public holiday cover, because I’m older and don’t have young kids, and we can work around it.
We get busy, and I work hard, but when my shift ends, I’m done.
And I get recognition from the company, and a very fair salary for what I do.
There are good companies to work for in IT - you just have to find them.
Yeah, the signs were all there at interview - I just didn’t know how to recognise them (I do now I’ve been burned).